Has Aztlán Been Discovered?

Off Topic. When you survey Chicano Art the legend of Aztlán comes up. It's told to be the home base of the Nahuatlaca tribe that migrated south to later form what became the Aztec civilization. The problem is no one knows where it is, so it became a spiritual homeland.

In the beta version of View From a Loft––during the immigrant demonstrations last May–-we speculated with tongue in cheek that it would be ironic if the marches were not an invasion, but a return home. That Los Angeles or Riverside, two regions with rich farmland along a river, was the actual site of the mysterious Aztlán.

As it turns out, it may be Blythe, California, located near the Colorado River in Riverside County.

For the Los Angeles Times Sunday Magazine, West,Ann Japenga meets up with Alfredo Acosta
Figueroa. He's a 73 year old self taught historian who is making a good
case for that the center of a universe is Blythe.

Talking in a nonlinear, single-minded rush to share his discoveries, he [Figueroa] tells me that for almost 50 years he has studied the migration story laid out in the codices. He has interviewed scholars in Mexico and Indian tribes living along the Colorado River, and stirred into the mix the indigenous songs and folklore he learned growing up.

Above all, he has studied the land. Whether he's driving to a fandango to play his guitar or to the senior center to get a flu shot, he's always matching up the images he sees in the mountains with the codices. "People say this is God's country—you better believe this is God's country," he says with a triumphant cackle.<snip>Based on his fieldwork, cross-referenced with the old texts, he has found some 300 petroglyphs, pictographs, mountain images, ancient trails, sacred sites and natural phenomena along the lower Colorado River that he says relate to the Aztec creation story. One bit of evidence: The fields of white herons and egrets you see while driving through Blythe. It all fits, Figueroa says, because Aztlan was known as "the land of herons."

Figueroa's most impressive evidence may be the geoglyphs—giant ground drawings of humans and animals—found here and in only a few other places in the world. The figures, some as large as 171 feet, were made by people (some say aliens) scraping away gravel to expose the lighter soil beneath. Figueroa describes one figure as an enormous bowman, arms outstretched, aiming his body like an arrow at the sun—a figure that also shows up in the codices.